Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies

Bianca Fadel

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Northumbria University, United Kingdom

Biography

Bianca Fadel is currently a postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for International Development at Northumbria University, United Kingdom. She is an interdisciplinary academic involved in policy-focused initiatives, with particular interests in community development in the global South. Bianca’s current work focuses on local volunteering, displacement and livelihoods in humanitarian and development settings. Her doctoral research conceptualizes the practice of local volunteering during a protracted crisis and understand the implications for humanitarian and development discourses and practices, based on evidence from Burundi, East Africa. She holds a M.A in Humanitarian Action and a B.A in International Relations. 

Fadel previously worked as Advisor at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), supporting the Humanitarian Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil. As focal point for humanitarian affairs, Fadel actively worked in bilateral and multilateral relations of the Brazilian humanitarian diplomacy strategies. Her experience also includes the implementation of local youth and community engagement volunteering projects as a volunteer leader at the Brazilian Red Cross.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH

  1. The scale, forms and distribution of volunteering amongst refugee youth populations in Uganda (2024), Population Space and Place, https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2817 (with M. Baillie Smith, S. Mills, D. Rogerson, A. Sahasranaman, M. Okech, R. Turyamureeba, C. Tukundane, F. Ahimbisibwe, O. Boyle and P. Kanyandago)

  2. Uneven geographies of youth volunteering in Uganda: Multi-scalar discourses and practices (2022), Geoforum, 134, 30-39 (with M. Baillie Smith, S. Mills and M. Okech)

  3. Volunteering hierarchies in the global South: remuneration and livelihoods (2022), Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 33, 93-106, (with M. Baillie Smith, A. O’Loghlen and S. Hazeldine)

  4. How shades of truth and age affect responses to COVID-19 (Mis) information: randomized survey experiment among WhatsApp users in UK and Brazil (2021), Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(88), 1–12 (with S. Vijaykumar, Y. Jin, D.  Rogerson et al.).

  5. Volunteerism and Community Resilience: Locally Owned Solutions Delivering Impact (2020), IAVE 2020 Conference Paper (with A. Chadwick).

  6. Volunteering: Connecting the Global Agenda on Sustainability to the Community Level (2020), Encyclopedia of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Partnerships for the Goals, ed. W. Leal Filho et al., Springer International Publishing.